#10minwin - RAG

I've read a lot about teachers who get students to self-assess and RAG, but following an activity this week realised I haven't helped students understand how to assess themselves properly.

In an activity where students wrote a tough question on a post-it that they could answer, they then circulated the room and asked each other in pairs. If they both got it right, they switched post-its, if a mistake was made then the answer had to be explained.

During feedback following the activity, a student commented that some of the time if he made a mistake, the "asker" was able to give the answer but not explain it, so he didn't feel he'd learnt. So here comes the new self-assessment criteria (note the "yet"):

I intend to use this both as a whole class activity (using coloured ABCD cards) and also getting students to highlight in the margin next to a specific skill or question.

#10minwin - Question, Feeling, Learning Plenary

Following a session on our New Staff Induction meetings, I've been using the Question - Feeling - Learning activity as a plenary.

In summary, students are asked to stand by one of the 3 posters (around the room), according to what they'd like to share about the lesson:
- do they have a question to ask?
- how do they feel about the topic / lesson?
- what have they learnt today?

Students appear to have really enjoy this as it gives them a real chance to be heard. However, as one of the classes I do this with has 35 pupils, it's impossible to hear from them all at once! In a coaching session this week we discussed how to address this, with the following ideas that I'm eager to try this week. The aim is to hear from all students, albeit it sometimes indirectly by getting students to form subsets (yes, maths in pedagogy - thank you coach!) as well as giving learners a sentence starter to help them phrase their thoughts.

Feeling

Tasks

- join to a group of people who share your feeling

- find a person who feels the opposite way to you, and find out why

Sentence Starters

"I feel... because..."

"I feel .... but last lesson I felt..."

 Question: sentence starters

Tasks

- join to a group of people that have the same question as you

- ask your question to the "question" group and see if anyone can answer it

Sentence Starters

“I’d like to know why…”

“I understand … but I’m not so sure about ….”

 Learning

Tasks

- join with other people that have learnt the same thing as you

- explain what you have learnt to someone else in the "learning" group

Sentence Starters

“I didn’t know how to do … before, but now I can.”

“I’ve learnt that it’s a good idea to…”

“I’ve learnt that it’s OK to…”

#10minwin - Challenge 100

I love 100 squares.

You can look for all sorts of patterns, impose different rules for creating numbers, look for relationships amongst rows and columns...

So I stuck a massive one up on the wall.

Each month I've given pupils a different challenge, so far being:
(i) make any number using four 4s
(ii) make any number using five 5s
(iii) give an expression for any number based on where you see n

I should now explain the second point...
I love post-it notes.

Within one week of working at my NQT school, my head of department arrived in my room with 4 packs of post-its and 2 packs of mini post-its. Word travels fast.

To start with, I offered no incentive or reward for this challenge, yet pupils took it upon themselves to sporadically ask for post-its to complete a number that they'd worked out during the lesson.

A distraction? Possibly. But I can't see self-motivation to work on a number challenge as a bad thing.

#10minwin - True or False Board

Probably one of the most heatedly discussed boards in my classroom: True or False?

Tackling misconceptions and insufficient explanations, pupils vote on whether they think the statement is true or false. At the end of the week the correct answer is revealed with an explanation.

My favourite moment had to be a gaggle of 1st years running to change their vote on the statement above, following a test on order of operations, as they realised they'd forgotten to divide before subtracting!

The statement bank can be found here - any more ideas greatly appreciated!